Both Screenplays are finished.

PRISONER OF UTOPIA (part 1)

Synopsis/Character Breakdown 7.28.14

LOGLINE: A Sci-Fi Action Adventure

In the year 2060, a female protector from an idyllic, yet secret, society and a rough-edged cop from seedy Vegas, wage a war of independence against the Big-Brother establishment that controls them, and in the process they have to come to terms with which life is the better choice to share together.

SYNOPSIS:

In 2060, there’s a self-sufficient community where life is perfect – or at least perfectly controlled. MERV created Harmony Grove after he lost his family to senseless violence. His ideal notion was that if you live somewhere where nothing bad is allowed to happen, nothing bad will. Decades later, generations born within the walls of Harmony Grove have never been outside, and don’t even know that the raw experience that is Las Vegas, is a short pod flight away.

Sierrah is a sharp young, protector in Harmony Grove, trained and raised for her service, she is ready to become a level 4 – the level where they are given enormous responsibility to protect Harmony Grove citizens – the level that comes with surgically implanted technology under the guise that it is how they are given direction and information. Sierrah is a triple threat, Harmony Grove’s only one. She’s incredibly fast, smart and a gorgeous female. So when a citizen escapes, she is elevated beyond level 3, even without the suit surgery, to help retrieve him. The other citizens involved in the case need to be taken to the Vegas site where the escapee is being held so that nothing slips to the residents about the trouble. She’s told to pick up the young men and in her haste to please, she forgets to pack her daily supplement, the one that stops all of the residents from feeling emotion. She’s loyal and interested in advancing to level 4 protector so she does as told toward that end – but once outside of Harmony Grove’s boundaries she starts to feel things she never knew she could – and she likes it. Sierrah maintains composure while recording in her journal about her newfound feelings. She knows there has to be another way other than weeding (killing) the young men she’s assigned to interrogate. Meanwhile, Officer Teemo, who found the escapee, is given a note by the escapee: ‘HELP’. Vegas is still considered part of ‘free America’ but technology is so advanced that every citizen is closely monitored on a ubiquitous grid. Teemo and his best friend Sal communicate via the ancient technology of text messages – Sal is a data whiz, secluded in a hotel space, with complete access to the grid. Sierrah does so well with the young men, she’s told to interrogate Teemo, and bring back his ‘device’.

The leaders of Harmony Grove are frustrated they can’t tap into this messaging system, and are concerned the secrecy of their society may be at risk. Her feelings take over and she trusts Teemo when he says he wants to help. She feels determined not to let anyone be weeded until she can assess the situation completely and come to terms with her feelings. So she goes rogue with Teemo’s help. They both want to save the escapee and the two young men from being killed. The only way to do this is to stop the heart of Harmony Grove – the control room that monitors and delivers all of the technology. They set off a high alert within Harmony Grove sending its leader into a tailspin, as he is now little more than a puppet. Merv’s partner, sold out to other ‘data brokers’ who created their own communities, even more self-sufficient and powerful than Harmony Grove, and has been in charge ever since. But when that happened governments worldwide, not only took notice, they took charge. With lives and lifestyles hanging in the balance, if Teemo and Sierrah succeed, they could save not only their own lives, but millions of people on Earth as well, because Harmony Grove is but a small burg in a global political chess game driven by technology hidden in places that make you squirm.

MAIN CHARACTERS:

MERV: A wealthy philanthropist who saw his family brutally ripped away. He wrote endlessly for a cathartic release, and came away with what would become THE DOCTRINE. He got the only two friends who stood by him in the worst of times, James Bettis Sr. and Carmine Heathcliff, known as ‘Heath,’ to work alongside him and create Harmony Grove. He knew what would happen if you let everybody in – it would end up just like the uncontrolled environment of a free America; vice greed and indulgence unchecked would only breed more of the same. “If you try to give Utopia to everybody, you’ll end up giving it to nobody.” In the end, though proud of some of the citizens bred inside Harmony Grove’s walls, like Sierrah and Kyyel, he realizes his vision is destroying more lives than helping. Just what he wanted to avoid.

SIERRAH:   A strong, young woman, whose looks and confidence are only outmatched by her pragmatic focus. She was born in Harmony Grove and has been training for twenty years to serve as a protector to its citizens. She’s determined to be promoted to level 4, because that is when she will be fully suited to the role – suited both in skill and in body. At level 4, protectors of Harmony Grove are surgically suited up with technology under the guise that the gear will make them better protectors, but in reality the suits provide the leaders behind the scenes full access to the protectors minds, motions and life. Sierrah gets thrust into a world she doesn’t even know exists when she’s brought in to find out what some young men know about an escaped citizen, who happens to be one of the boys’ father. The case is high alert, all hands on deck, and Sierrah sees it as a chance to clinch her promotion to level 4. In fact she’s given responsibility above her level – and because she’s not officially a 4, she’s not ‘suited up’. She can relate to the young men, one in particular is incredibly perfect – surely a product of conception and upbringing in an idyllic world. So, when she’s meant to lie to them and not tell them they are targets for weeding (death), she begins to rationalize how to get the information her superiors want and convince them weeding would be a mistake. Her first step is somewhat successful – but the information she uncovers, combined with the sensory overload of an intense Vegas, elicits emotions she’s been raised, medicated and trained to repress. Her superiors give her more responsibility and she questions the police detective who found the escapee on the streets of Vegas. With Teemo, her attraction is undeniable – yet she knows to be a protector is to deny such nonsense. Not only is seeing how the other half lives; free, emotionally raw and responsible for their own career choices, liberating to Sierrah; it’s so new and unexpected she has a hard time maintaining her stoic composure. As she and Teemo discuss the case, she cannot deny that they both share the desire to help the escapee – at the very least be heard and hopefully not killed for speaking his mind. Sierrah uses her tactical experience to convince her superiors to let her continue to meet with Teemo, and in doing so she makes the decision to go rogue with him and save the men from weeding. But as she and Teemo fight against the city that made her, Sierrah has to come to terms with how to balance the good it offered vs. the freedom of everything beyond.

TEEMO: Comes off as a bad boy that all the girls would love to date – but not settle down with. At the core he’s big guy with a soft heart. His rough around the edges exterior comes with his job as a cop, and the life of someone in the melting pot of humanity in a futuristic Vegas where data brokers are like drug dealers, but everyday and everything is a gamble. In many ways he’s a product of his environment and training, just like the girl he’s crazy for, Sierrah. What makes Teemo a true hero is that he chose to be a ‘protector’ when he signed up to be a cop; a fact that is not lost on Sierrah’s sharp mind. So it’s an easy leap for him to go along with Sierrah’s plan, what becomes difficult is accepting that maybe the ideals of paradise aren’t so wrong – it’s just they need to be reigned in by the theme he’s had to learn in sin city: ‘everything in moderation.’

HEATH: One of only two that Merv trusted with his creation of Harmony Grove. Heath has always recognized the profit potential in controlling the data of the people, which led to also selling out control to a group with much more influence. He and Bettis’s father had a falling out when the senior Bettis started playing devil’s advocate with the whole plan – nearly blowing his data brokering deal. Heath eventually had him weeded and now that his son, James Bettis has escaped and his grandson speaks of his book of truths, he has no problem making the call for the whole family to be weeded. Heath’s main strength has always been his arrogance and over-confidence in his power, which of course in the end is his undoing because he is just a puppet in the grand scheme. Much like he has enforced the classes of Harmony Grove, the leaders of the other communities are their own elite class and at the end of the day they too, are being ruled by one supreme class – ‘too big to fail’.

SAL: Teemo’s best friend, who lives in a massive Vegas resort. In fact it is so self-sufficient, Sal hasn’t been outside in 10 years.   He uses the hotel as the perfect cover for his monitoring of all things driven by data on the grid. He’s not a nut, but he is one of the guys who as a kid grew up tethered to video games and online forums. This upbringing served to make him a leader in monitoring data online and has garnered him the reputation for being the leader of Protectors of Privacy, a liberal freedom fighting group that keeps Vegas and America in check with their abuses of monitoring the lives of their citizens. Sal has the tools and connections to constantly be monitoring these segments of population for egregious breaches; it’s the rest of the world he trusts even less. In many ways he is equal in strength to the leaders of Harmony Grove, but he is opposite in intention. So, as the story progresses Sal needs to come to terms with what is good about a ‘planned community’ vs. always fighting the establishment and how it fits into what is so innate in him, he may never be able to stop letting technology rule his every waking moment.

One of the best known and influential figures of the French Revolution.

The idea of trying to control enlightenment.

But what about those who might rationalize that it is to protect them from pain.

In this story, there is a self sufficient community where people live out their entire life.  It was inspired by communities like the Amish.

http://listverse.com/2012/10/29/10-things-you-probably-dont-know-about-the-amish/

Check out this link

http://www.hbo.com/vice#/vice/episodes/02/22-surveillance-city-the-forgotten-war/video/debrief-surveillance-city.html/eNrjcmbOYM5nLtQsy0xJzXfMS8ypLMlMds7PK0mtKFHPz0mBCQUkpqf6JeamcjIyskknlpbkF+QkVtqWFJWmsjGyMQIAWCcXOA==

This is a major plot in this story.

I love dogs.

I had this inspiration several years ago when I saw a company propose manufacturing a chip for children.  It was based on the same chip that they put into dogs.  There was no battery, no power supply, it didn’t transmit a signal like a cell phone, but you could “Scan” the Dog/Child and get information off the chip.

Related is the use of these ankle bracelets they put on people who are on probation.  Basically like strapping your cell phone on, with something to where you can’t remove it, and then having an APP to track this persons every movement.

What if the Dog chips had a power supply and what if we started with all felons and required the chips to be surgically implanted?  (There are many stories that have used this idea, Hunger Games for one so the combatants can be tracked.)

I am going to invent a small cell phone type device that is used only for tracking of children.  It will have GPS and Cell Tower triangulation technology.  It will be a small necklace/pendant (or other jewelry) and my child will be required to wear it.  Or at least my dog.  (He keeps digging under the fence and getting out.  Even though it is a large backyard, he’s well fed, it’s loaded with toys and plenty of trees to mark, he insist on getting out?) 

The internet has made so many changes to our world, people are writing novels in an attempt to describe them.  The internet has had such an impact on society it is somewhere between incredible and indescribable.

At what age should we allow our children free access to this information?

Not long ago I remember the threat, “We are going to send you off to convent”, as a way to try and fix a young person, especially a girl.  Girls who were promiscuous and the parents didn’t approve and wanted a dramatic change in behavior.

The degree of success, after a child becomes “enlightened”, is zero.

With younger and younger access to the internet, which is synonymous with enlightenment, success rates of wanted behavior is zero.

Some argue that early enlightenment has just as many positive effects and advantages.  So the debate will continue.

Thank God there is a choice.

So will women continue to choose to become Nuns even after they test the waters of enlightenment?

Should those in the know, those “Higher Ranking”, choose for others?  Should one be forced to enter a Convent ignorant?